A Conversational Analysis Study Of Teacher Instruction Sequences In High School English Classroom

Thenew curriculum reform vigorously advocates interactive teaching,encouraging students to actively express their thinking in English and participate in classroom activities,abandoning the traditional classroom teaching model dominated by teachers.Teachers’ discourse plays an important role in the implementation of interactive teaching.As an important part of classroom discourse,classroom directive isan important factor affecting teacher-student interaction,which has been concerned for a long time.A great deal of research has been done on what clear and effective classroom directive is and what form and function classroom directive has in English classroom teaching.However,few scholars have studied the instruction sequence from a dynamic perspective in senior high school English class.Therefore,it is of great significance for this study to explore the dynamic characteristics of teachers’ instructions from the perspective of conversation analysis,which can be regarded as a new perspective and expands the research scope of the classroom directive.Basedoninteractive linguistics and speech act theory,with high-quality English classesof senior high school as the main source of corpus,this research is done to observe and analyze the teachers’ instruction sequences in English classes of senior high school.In this paper,the instruction sequences in class are transcribed and analyzed according to the principles of conversation analysis to explore the following three questions:(1)What are the turn design formats of teachers’ instruction sequences in English classesof senior high school?(2)What are the sequence organization features of teachers’ instruction sequences in English classesof senior high school?(3)What actions are mainly performed by classroom directives of English teachers in senior high school to guide students’ responses?The analysis of corpus shows that: 1)In terms of turn construction,when teachers give initial instructions,they often useimperative sentences,declarative sentences,interrogative sentences and their mixed forms to construct turns;when teachers add instructions,in addition to the above mentioned,they also use discourse markers to help them construct turns.When students respond,they can respond in the form of verbal communication or in the form of behavior,i.e.,non-verbal communication.Furthermore,students can also construct turns of verbal communication through singleturns and non-single turns.2)In terms of sequence organization,the instruction sequencesinclude basic adjacency pairs and extendedadjacency pairs,the latter including pre-expansions,insert-expansions and post-expansions.The pre-expansion refers to the presetting of the base instruction sequence by using the pre-sequence of invitationor request;the insert-expansion refers to the further explanation by using the insert-sequence in order to eliminate the obstacles in the understanding of the base instruction sequence;and the post-expansion refers to give students’ feedback or expansion by using the minimum post-expansion or non-minimum post-expansion so as to end or expand the base instruction sequence accordingly.3)In terms of teachers’ instructions to guide students’ responses,teachers’ instructions mainly guide students’ responses by performing five kinds of actions,namely,giving orders,expressing requests,seeking information,initiating corrections and confirming information,so as to promote the implementation of interactive teaching.On the basis of this research,the author also puts forward corresponding suggestions,in order to promote teachers to give effective classroom directives and to guide the students to give better answers and then promote effective interactions between teachers and students.This study aims to improve English teachers’ attention to their own instructions,promoting them to adjust and improve their instructions from different aspects by studying dynamically the instruction sequences in high school English classes,so as to promote effective communication between teachers and students to ensure the smooth development of interactive teaching.